


Indisposable

by Imslightlydeadtoday



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - fandom, johnlock - Fandom
Genre: Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Slow Burn, idek what this is, its my first fic cut me some slack lmao
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:22:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29810442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imslightlydeadtoday/pseuds/Imslightlydeadtoday
Summary: After Sherlock's death, John falls apart. In the 2 years Sherlock is gone, he manages to pull himself somewhat together with the help of friends, but he wonders if he'll ever be the same again, or if he'll always have a Sherlock shaped hole in his chest. Then again, maybe it won't be forever
Relationships: Mary Morstan/John Watson, Mycroft Holmes & Greg Lestrade, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Kudos: 5





	1. Authors note

Hi! This is my first fanfic, so if its a bit crap I apologise. I'm going to try to update it at least every Wednesday, but might do more updates during the week if I can. Hope you enjoy!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John evades the help of his friends and therapist after Sherlock's death, and gets a... surprise a little while later

It felt like nothing. it felt like nothing and everything at once. It was quiet but his ears were screaming at him to stop the noise, he couldn't see but he somehow had to see everything. He didn't think he could scream, but apparently his screams were the loudest, his voice cracking as he ran towards the lifeless body of his best friend, his legs feeling like lead on the concrete, if only they could just move-

"John?" 

He started, a soft voice to his left pulling him from his head. He opened his eyes and looked up to see the concerned look his therapist, Ella, was giving him.

"John, I said are you alright?" She placed her notebook on the table next to her and fixed him with an indecipherable look. He felt bare when he was with her, as if she didn't really need to be asking him these questions as she already knew the answers, but wanted to see him grasp for them anyway. Or maybe she just reminded him too much of Sherlock in that way.

"I'm fine. Just got distracted. Did you know you've run out of sugar?" He was aiming to deflect the question, trying to distract her by doing his limited deductions, something he'd started a few months ago. He hadn't really gotten anywhere with them, but then again, when you're not Sherlock Holmes there's only so far you can get with these things. 

"John, I know what you're doing. You do it every week, and every week we have the same conversation. If you would just open up, just let me in and talk to me, I could help you so much quicker." She gave him that pitying look that everyone seemed to adopt around him these days, as if he was something to be handled with care, something breakable, which he wasn't, he was just fine, as he kept telling them.

"Thing is, I don't actually need your help. I'm doing fine, Sherlock was months ago, people die, I'm over it. We weren't even that close anyway." He snapped, sick of the tiptoeing around him, and the whispers and the soft pats on the back as if he was a mourning cat, unable to handle himself. 

Ella seemed unconvinced, but dropped the subject, as she did every week, and, as she did every week, picked up her leather notebook and flicked through it, searching the pages for her next slot with John, which was almost pointless as they both knew exactly how it was going to go; John would sit there, icy and uncooperative, and Ella would try desperately to get a shred of information out of him, to somehow try to get him to open up and start healing. They both knew his macho fine facade was just that, a facade, and that underneath his unmoving gazes and carefully empty eyes, he was breaking.

She mumbled something about a five thirty appointment the following week, but John was only half listening, his thoughts fixated on the same thing they had been for the past 3 months. He sighed and stood up when Ella seemed to be finished. His coat was out in the hall, so they walked slowly through the house, and Ella chatted about nothing as he carefully adjusted his cane to allow himself to slip his arms into his coat before heading to the front door. He'd started using his cane again shortly after Sherlock's death, something that Ella had had a field day about, but he just blamed it on the cyclist who had knocked him to the ground that day. 

As he left Ella's house, she touched his arm gently, turning his around and fixing him with another painfully sympathetic look.

"You know I'm always here to talk John, I'm trying to help you get better. And if you can' trust me, please just.." She sighed, knowing he probably wouldn't listen, "Please just talk to your friends, they're there for you, and I know they're worried about you." 

He just smiled sadly at her, knowing she meant well.

"I'd have nothing to talk about."

He said a quick thank you and turned towards his car, hoping to get away as soon as possible.

He got about two blocks before he had to pull over, his heart pounding in his chest, his hands clamming up as his breathing shallowed.

"Shit shit shit, not now, please not now." He muttered at the oncoming panic attack. He'd been having these for months, and although he hadn't outright confided in anyone about them, he knew Molly suspected he was suffering from them, as she sometimes randomly showed up at his door with various herbal teas, clearly trying to calm him down and provide him with some form of normality to cling onto. 

He gripped the steering wheel tightly, his harsh breathing filling the car as he tried to get himself under control, drawing in shaky gasps of air as he forced himself to slowly count to 6, and then out for 8, and repeat.

As his breathing calmed, the shaking set in, and his eyes flooded with unwelcome tears.

"Oh for fucks sake John, pull yourself together." He told himself, but knew it would amount to nothing. In moments like this, all he wanted was a sharp comment, a sarcastic joke, and his annoyingly witty roommate to pat him on the back and tell him to snap out of it, that they had more important things to do than mope around.

This only made him cry harder as grief and realisation washed over him for the hundredth time, reminding him that he'd never hear that baritone again, never be on the receiving end of another of those sardonic remarks. 

After about 10 minutes of desperately trying to get himself calm, he managed to clear his eyes enough to see, and deemed himself ok to drive. He made his way back to the little flat he was renting around the corner from 221B, just far away enough to not have to see it every day, but close enough in case... well, in case Sherlock's ghost took a fancy to haunting it, he supposed.

As he stumbled up the stairs and to his room, bypassing the kitchen and dinner completely, just needing sleep, he wondered if he'd ever be the same again, wondered if he'd ever be more than a lonely man, putting on the worlds worst facade, but having to keep it up as it was the only thing between him and falling completely over the edge, somewhat similar to the way Sherlock had all those months ago.

*********

[2 years later]

He straightened his tie as he admired himself in the crappy bathroom mirror. Yeah, he looked presentable enough for a proposal. Steadying himself with a deep breathe and a cold splash of water to the face, he opened the bathroom door and made his way back to the restaurant table.

He'd made it back before Mary, and took the opportunity to try and steady his nerved, and quickly rehearse his plan before she got back. As he was running through the last part of it, her chair was pulled back, and he looked up to see her smiling down at him, a napkin in her hands as she finished drying them. 

"So, what was it you wanted to ask me?" She questioned, he head cocked slightly as she gave him that soft look she knew melted him like mutter.

He coughed and looked down awkwardly, his hands fiddling nervously in his lap.

"Well, Mary-" He started,

"Excuse me, sir, I think you'll find this vintage exceptionally to your liking, it has all the qualities of the old and some of the colours of the new-" The waiter who had served him before his bathroom trip interrupted, shoving a bottle of red wine unceremoniously in his face.

Mary snorted, and his her face behind her glass as John held back a sigh, turning slightly to the waiter and forcing out a polite, "No not now thanks." while keeping his gaze steadily on Mary.

The waiter, however, didn't seem to get the memo, and continued to baffle on, "Like a gaze from a crowd of strangers, suddenly one is aware of staring into the face of an old friend..." 

John looked up questioningly at the waiter, ready to ask what the hell that meant when- 

He took one look at his dead, or so he though, best friend, and promptly fainted into his onion soup.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which John can't quit believe Sherlock is there.

The light was too bright.

John groaned as he slowly opened his eyes, immediately brining his arms up to shade his face from the glaring light above him.

"What the fuck?" He was home? He was in his and Mary's modest house in the suburbs, lying fully clothed on his and Mary's double bed, with his and Mary's duck feather pillows attempting to swallow him back into the realm of sleep.

And Sherlock Holmes was sitting on his and Mary's rocking chair in the corner of the room.

Everything came flooding back to John like a dam was breaking inside him. Sherlock, stock still on Barts roof, pleading to John to just stay where he was. Sherlock, now crying, saying goodbye and then John's name as if John was the only thing that mattered at that moment. Sherlock falling. Grief. Two years of grief and pain and healing and talking and more grief and more healing. And then Sherlock again, always Sherlock, but this time he wasn't supposed to be here, because Sherlock was dead, Sherlock was dead and John checked and he mourned him and he cried for him and he-

"John!" He had his hands round someones throat. 

He looked up, dazed, to see Mary standing with her hands wildly gesturing for John to stop.

John looked down at his hands, which had somehow, in the few minutes since he'd woken up and seen Sherlock sitting calmly in the corner of his room, come to rest on said persons neck, and were now squeezing slightly too hard to be comfortable.

"Shit. Shit, I'm sorry." He let go and backed away from his dead best friend, although Sherlock was starting to seem more alive than dead, but that wasn't possible because-

"You were dead," did he say that? He must have, as both Mary and Sherlocks heads turned to him from the look they were sharing, "You were dead, Sherlock. I saw you die. You had no pulse, you weren't breathing, you were," he took a deep breath, "dead." 

"Are you sure you checked properly? Because I'm very much alive, I thoroughly checked." That baritone voice stated, slightly sarcastic but less brash than John remembered him to be.

"No, Sherlock, I mean you died. I went to your funeral. I mourned you. You may not have actually died, but you died to me and I had to actually lose you. It may not have been real, but it was very real to me. So again, what the fuck." John was trying to control his breathing, he could feel his heart racing, his hands clamming up and his mouth getting drier and drier by the second.

Please not now, this is so inconvenient he thought, trying to focus on something solid, something to ground him, get him out of his head.

Sherlock was talking, gesturing in his very Sherlock manner, but John just couldn't hear him. It was like his head was submerged in static, his vision blurring slightly at the edges as his breath harshened. 

At some point Mary, who had stayed still and quiet up until that point, must have noticed, as he was now sitting on the floor with his hands above his head and Sherlock's hand (Sherlock's hand?) in his hair, carding through it while both of them told him to breathe with them, demonstrating with over the top inhales and exhales.

Once he got a slight grip on himself, he sat back, and Sherlock's hand dropped back to his side, instantly replaced by Mary's, who rested her hand at the nape of his neck and turned his head to look at her. 

"John I know this is a shock, and you must be angry, but Sherlock and I had a chat while you were out cold. He's... he's sorry, John. And he had reasons, damn good ones too if you ask me, but he didn't mean to hurt you." she spoke softly, as if that would make any difference to what she was saying.

"Oh yeah? He's so sorry that he hasn't even said it himself-"

"Well you haven't really given him a chance, he just-"

"No Mary, I haven't. I must have forgotten to be lenient during the panic attack, or the passing out, or the finding out your dead best friend isn't actually dead, which really shouldn't be surprising be because its Sherlock bloody Holmes and when has he ever been reliable in his whole damn life, and now death it seems, and now he's sat here in my fucking bedroom as if nothing even happened." John was struggling to breathe by the end of his rant, trying to drag in air while glaring at Sherlock, who was picking at the carpet and looked uncharacteristically small against the beige walls.

"I want you to leave."

Sherlock's head snapped up to look at him, and he found those pale eyes fixing him with an uncertain frown, "What?"

"Leave. I.e, stand up, walk away, and leave." John wanted sleep. Yes, he wanted sleep, then a good breakfast, and then to sleep some more, and while Sherlock was here there was no way he was getting any peace. Sure he knew that as soon as Sherlock left, John's brain would most likely still deny him rest, but it would be easier to pretend if he didn't have a living cause of his stress sitting 3 feet away from him.

"I... Are you sure? I haven't even explained yet, you don't know how I did it." Again the uncertainty was evident. John frowned. Sherlock was never uncertain. An asshole, yes. An idiot, completely, but never uncertain. He didn't like it.

"Yes, I'm sure. I need time. If I want you to explain, or to talk to you, I'll call you. Until then, I don't want to see you. Please. You owe me this."

Something changed in Sherlock's face. The softness of his uncertainty was replaced by harsh look in his eyes, his mouth set in an angry thin line.

"Fine. Good day John. Mary." He didn't look back as he stood up, tucking his hands neatly into the pockets of that bloody coat, and strode out the door. A fee seconds later, Mary and John flinched as the front door slammed and a car engine spluttered to life in the driveway.

Mary turned to John, questions on her lips, but John gave her a look that said please don't, I don't want to talk about it right now, and she nodded, pursed her lips and turned to the bathroom.

John sighed, rubbing his face absentmindedly as he scanned through his thoughts.

Sleep.


End file.
